This is taken from the Guardian:

Don Homfray
by Gill Ducker
Friday 23 March 2012 15.16 GMT

Don Homfray, who has died aged 76, was a leading production designer at the BBC from the 1960s to the 1980s. He designed major period productions such as War and Peace (1972), starring Anthony Hopkins, for which he designed hundreds of sets and working cannon, carts and gun carriages. As well as working on location in the former Yugoslavia, he created the vast magnificent interior of the Kremlin in Studio One at Television Centre. It was at the time the largest and highest set ever built there. War and Peace earned him a Bafta award in 1973, and he was also nominated for Germinal (1970) and Vienna 1900 (1973).

The son of an engineer, he was born in Codsall, Staffordshire. He studied architecture at Wolverhampton Polytechnic (now the University of Wolverhampton) before joining the BBC; he worked at Birmingham and Cardiff before progressing to Television Centre in London. His early works included an episode of Dixon of Dock Green (1968) and the TV series Brett, starring Patrick Allen. He found his metier in literary adaptations, starting with a mini-series based on Zola's Germinal, directed by John Davies. This huge undertaking involved designing scores of sets, including a mine shaft with a working "cage" which transported the miners to the coal face through cascading underground water. The exteriors were filmed in Durham, where he managed to transform a deserted miners' village into its French equivalent and make practical an abandoned pit head.

In 1979, he joined the BBC Shakespeare series, designing seven of the adaptations of the plays: Henry IV, Parts 1 and 2 (1979), Henry V (1979), Hamlet (1980), A Winter's Tale (1981), The Merry Wives of Windsor (1982) and The Comedy of Errors (1983). His other productions included Oxbridge Blues (1984), directed by James Cellan Jones and derived from the short stories of Frederic Raphael, and an adaptation of Noël Coward's Mr and Mrs Edgehill (1985), directed by Gavin Millar. As a freelance, he designed adaptations of Roald Dahl's Danny, the Champion of the World (1989), Michael Morpurgo's My Friend Walter (1992) and Mary Wesley's Harnessing Peacocks (1992).

On his retirement to rural Norfolk, he embarked on various study courses to expand his knowledge. In 1994 he enrolled at the University of East Anglia, eventually graduating in 1999 with a 2:1 degree in history. His dissertation, Arches in Triumph, combined his extensive theatre and design knowledge with his love of history and was highly praised. He moved to Norwich's historic Elm Hill area in 2003 and quickly became a central part of its village-like community. He directed a reading of A Midsummer Night's Dream for the residents and occasionally designed sets for the Maddermarket theatre in Norwich.

Don was a gentle, creative soul, but passionate and often fiery about many things, particularly politics, history and latterly the environment. I first met him in the early 1980s, when I was lucky enough to work with him on Oxbridge Blues. We later shared many happy years together as a couple, creating a wildlife garden and renovating an old house in rural Norfolk and enjoying a rich social life.  

His sister, Christine, and brother, David, survive him.